Rain and warmer weather have produced nice growth in master gardener Everett Price’s garden in Haysville.

Two weeks after the garden was on the master-gardeners’ garden tour, the Bermuda grass is recovering nicely from the traffic, Price says. Resiliency is definitely Bermuda’s strong suit. And also its weakness, if you don’t want aggressive grass.

Price and his wife, Michelle, have been harvesting lots of leafy greens for the dinner table, and are still picking asparagus. The onions, lettuce and peppers are growing well. The tomatoes are growing out of the cages, so Price will soon be removing the cages and attaching the vines to his trellis with bungee cords.

Cucumbers and cantaloupes have popped out of the ground and are now about 4 inches tall. The blackberries are blooming, and berries are forming. They are full of bees and butterflies, Price says.

The garden was too wet to plant for most or all of the week, but the Prices still hope to plant sweet corn, watermelon and okra when the soil dries out enough.

There has been little disease so far in area gardens, extension agent Bob Neier says. But keep an eye out for carpenter bees burrowing into cedar trellises and decks (use Sevin dust to hit only the burrowing bees so they’ll carry it into the nest) and watch for bagworms that are in the process of hatching. Wait another week and a half for all the bagworms to hatch, then treat with the a product containing the organic Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). (You’ll have to clobber them with Orthene if you wait until the worms get big.)

If your crape myrtles, mimosas and butterfly bushes have not leafed out yet, they are not going to, Neier says. On evergreens that are suffering winter kill – the worst Neier has seen in probably 15 years – cut out the dead parts (beige leaves on boxwood, for example, are not going to green up), trim the shrubs up to give them a bit of shape, and then step back and see how they look. If they’re not attractive, it’s time to remove the plants.